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A Cheap and Nice Substitute for Potted Fish

A cheap substitute for potted fish made from salmon scraps, anchovy paste, butter, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 535 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A Cheap and Nice Substitute for Potted Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the liquid from the salmon scraps.

Make the potted fish

  1. In a mortar, pound the salmon with anchovy paste, butter, and cayenne until well combined.

  2. Season highly with cayenne.

  3. Press the mixture into pots.

  4. Melt some butter and pour it over the tops of the pots.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salmon scraps
Provides the main fish body and flesh that forms the spread.
Anchovy paste
Adds a deep, savoury umami flavour to the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the mixture hold together and feel smooth.

The step that matters

Pound the salmon until well combined. If the fish, anchovy paste, butter and cayenne are not thoroughly worked together, the spread can taste patchy and have uneven texture. Thorough mixing distributes the fat and seasoning evenly through the flaked fish.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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